Recent Insight on How the Neuroscientific Approach Helps Clinicians

Hypnosis, a modified state of consciousness, reduces pain perception by re-engaging patients' resources to modulate pain and emotional distress, improving treatment and well-being. Neuroimaging shows hypnosis influences self and environmental consciousness networks, attentional and somatosensorial networks, disengaging subjects from external surroundings and altering body sensations and spontaneous thoughts. This review articulates clinical and neuroimaging findings on hypnosis for external pain stimuli, aiming to clarify mechanisms to guide future randomized controlled studies.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Hypnosis is a modified state of consciousness widely used to decrease pain perception in research protocols and clinical practice. In recent decades, hypnosis has been increasingly proposed to patients to re-engage their resources and capacities to modulate pain and emotional distress and to improve their treatment and recovery of well-being. Neuroimaging research helps clinicians to understand better how hypnosis works in terms of brain modulation. Hypnotic suggestions dramatically influence the self and environmental consciousness networks as well as the attentional and somatosensorial networks. This explains why the subjects feel disengaged from their external surroundings combined with the modification of sensations related to their body and spontaneous thoughts. In this review, we aim to articulate the clinical and neuroimaging findings related to hypnosis in the context of perception of external (pain) stimuli. We intend to shed light on several mechanisms related to this specific modified state of consciousness that will help in designing randomized and controlled studies in the future.